EVENTS

The board majority decided to expunge references to “justice”

Reading Katherine Stewart’s The Good News Club. In chapter 7 she goes to Austin to sit in on Texas Board of Education hearings in March 2010. Many astonishing things were said there.

The conservatives on the board want to make clear that the free enterprise system that makes America great has nothing to do with a universal concern for public policy and the common good – a concern they believe carries the dreaded taint of socialism. On a list of characteristics of good citizenship for grades 1 through 3, the board majority decided to expunge references to “justice” and “responsibility for the common good.”

That one makes me feel something very like nausea of the brain.

Another part of making America great involves eliminating all forms of the word “democratic,” which in the majority’s view might suggest a link between American history and the political party where all of America’s haters end up, namely, the Democratic Party. Thus, at [Cynthia] Dunbar’s insistence, the board replaces “democratic” and “representative democracy” with “constitutional republic,” and “democratic societies” with “societies with representative government.” [p 166-7]

And then there’s that word “slavery”…

At the behest of board conservatives, the word “slavery” is removed from the standards, replace by the awkwardly euphemistic term, “Atlantic triangular trade.” [p 167]

Comments

I wonder how they’ll spin the history of lynching in Texas. Can’t call it that, right? How about “punishment of Atlantic triangular trade individuals in accordance with representative popular choices of the citizenry” ?

At the behest of board conservatives, the word “slavery” is removed from the standards, replace by the awkwardly euphemistic term, “Atlantic triangular trade.”

That’s stunning. Do they also call the Civil War the “War Between The States” or the “War of Northern Aggression”?

The conservatives on the board want to make clear that the free enterprise system that makes America great has nothing to do with a universal concern for public policy and the common good – a concern they believe carries the dreaded taint of socialism.

It always amazes me when rich people think the rest of us should selflessly support a government that does little except protect rich people’s property rights and debt contracts.

I listened to the audio version of this book last year, after hearing Hemant Mehta recommend it. I thought it was going to be a semi-casual discussion of Christian privilege among students in public schools. Boy, was I mistaken.

On the contrary, it’s a devastating analysis of the history of sectarianism in America’s public schools from the top-down, which is its central point– it’s coming from without, not from within. Not only are the students not the source of these conflicts, generally not even the school administration itself is. It’s a full-scale attack on public schools and those who work in and attend them, insofar as the secular nature of that institution is concerned, by people who reject the notion of education itself if it doesn’t fit their particular religious narrative. And what’s more, the law is frequently on their side.